


Fifty-Fifty

by Masu_Trout



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Contracts, Developing Relationship, Extra Treat, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-18 04:25:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13674237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: Somewhere between the fighting and the blood and the endless explosions, Roadhog and Junkrat work out a deal.





	Fifty-Fifty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linguamortua](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linguamortua/gifts).



Roadhog wasn't much for regret. He couldn't afford to be—the things he'd done, he would have drowned in it a thousand times over if he let himself give in. Regret was sentimentality, pathetic emotion dressed up as nobility by people too cowardly to live with the consequences of the things they'd done.

So, yes, Roadhog had made some mistakes in his life. He'd learned from them, accepted them, and then he'd moved on. It was how he'd survived this long.

And yet—

“—And so I'm thinkin' we should get it written down proper, yanno, all classy like how it used to be done. _Official_.” 

And yet he was started to suspect he _really_ would regret agreeing to take on this walking disaster zone as an employer. Fuck's sake, Roadhog hadn't been around him more than a day and he wanted to blow his brains out already.

Junkrat grinned up at Roadhog, puffed up with pride as if he'd just said something completely rational instead of ludicrously stupid. Roadhog kept silent one moment, two, long enough that any sane human being would be eating their words like a three-course buffet… 

Junkrat kept smiling. Apparently the normal flow of conversation wasn't something anyone had ever taught him. (Nor, for that matter, did he seem to understand that Roadhog's snarling was an implied threat and not just a charming vocal quirk.) Roadhog couldn't even bother feeling surprised; it was always the stupid ones who survived to adulthood these days, because the smart ones realized it wasn't fucking worth it before they got that far.

“So,” Roadhog said finally, once it was clear Junkrat was going to win any and all games of _let's see who cracks first_ that they might ever have opportunity to play, “you want a contract. A written contract.”

The actual request-slash-demand had involved the man rambling on for a good two minutes, but he figured he'd picked the gist of it up well enough.

Junkrat nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly!” His fingers—the flesh set, not metal—drummed arrhythmically against the scorched tabletop they'd taken their seat at. The diner around them was in ruins, three-fourths of a ceiling and the walls near ready to come down, but it provided cover enough.

(Roadhog's idea. He supposed he could make a good bodyguard, provided his employer's standards were low enough.)

“See,” Junkrat continued, “I don't want this to be—oh you know, I'm your best mate and you're my only pal, and then next week we're pumping each other full of shrapnel n' screws because one of us got a decent offer from some two-bit bounty collection agency down the street. Fuck that, yeah?”

Roadhog agreed, actually, which was more than a bit concerning. Even a stopped clock was right twice a day, but it was hard to apply the saying to Junkrat—the man was anything _but_ stopped. He seemed to exist in a state of perpetual motion; harness him up to a treadmill and they could have solved all of Australia's energy problems without ever getting Omnics involved in the first place.

“Contracts don't help.” Roadhog snorted. “Contracts aren't worth _shit_.” 

The moment the words were out of his mouth, he wished he could snatch them from the air. He'd meant to sound scornful, but it hadn't come out that way. He sounded like he cared, like the worth of contracts was something that actually mattered to him.

(There'd been a contract once—owned by his grandfather, then his mother, then the man who Roadhog had once been—that said the land they lived on and died on and spent every moment of their days sweating over was theirs to _keep_. Funny story.)

His thoughts weren't anything he wanted anyone prying into, and Junkrat seemed like the prying type.

Thankfully, though, Junkrat didn't ask. He just gave Roadhog a look—scrunched-up, squint-eyed, like he was trying to be all thoughtful—and then nodded. “Fair enough. But if we both _pretend_ it means something, that's pretty much the same thing? Right?”

Roadhog rumbled out a sigh and rolled his eyes behind his mask, but he didn't bother to argue the point. Being an enforcer was a fucking tiresome task; drawing up some ridiculous fake contract would hardly be the stupidest (or most illegal, or most dangerous, or most boring) thing he'd been asked to do in the decades since the reactor had blown. No harm in indulging one Junker's odd quirks, especially not when that Junker was going to be the one paying him.

“Fine,” he said, “contract it is. You got paper?”

“Uh…” Confusion quickly turned to sheepishness on Junkrat's face.

So, no. Probably nothing to write with, either, except maybe a pointy stick to draw shapes in the dirt. Another question occurred to him: “Can you even write?”

The man across the table bristled with sudden fury. A metallic noise echoed through the air as he slammed his prosthetic against the table. 

“I can read! I know signs, and newspaper headlines, and—and sometimes the story bits under the headlines too if there's enough left to make out.” His lips curled back to expose jagged teeth as if he were some sort of feral animal; a rat in more than name, perhaps.

“I asked about writing.”

“I…” Junkrat paused for a moment, then the anger drained from him as quickly as it had come. “Yes. Mostly. Um. Capital letters I've got, at least; it just takes me a little while, is all.” He scowled down at the ruined table. “Still can't get fuckin' lowercase q right more than half the time, though, and don't even get me _started_ on lowercase t. Right pain in the arse, it is, having to cross it every single time.”

“Mm.” That was—well, better than he'd assumed it would be, actually. Most of the Outback didn't even have that much. Still, he hadn't come here to watch his employer struggle over spelling for the next few hours. “Find me a pen and paper and I'll write it.”

It was starting to get exhausting just watching Junkrat's sudden shifts in mood. Roadhog had no idea how the man managed to live it. 

“Right then,” he said. His smile stretched from ear to ear, jagged and sharp. “I knew it'd be a good idea to hire you! Just gimme one minute—”

He was off like a shot, stumbling for a moment before righting himself and darting across the room. The drawers of the crumbling bar counter were the first to go; he ripped them straight out of their tracks and dumped them on the floor, humming a tuneless song as he went.

His mobility was better than Roadhog had expected—normally it took a fairly expensive prosthetic or a healthy dose of nanobots to make up for a missing leg. Only the most successful Junkers could afford it. Junkrat's hunched-over gait and the mismatched legs should've left him hobbling, but if anything the wood-and-scrap-metal prosthetic he wore seemed more useful than any of the chrome implants he'd seen far more influential folks wearing. He walked with an odd sort of one-two pace that left him looking like he was about to tumble forward with every step, but he was quick on his feet and he didn't ever falter.

“You make your leg?” Roadhog asked.

“Of course!” Junkrat upended another drawer as he spoke. “Can't fucking trust doctors out here—you know one of 'em told me I wasn't gonna walk again after I blew my leg off? Buncha scrap-headed drongos is what they are. Better to do it yourself.”

Roadhog grunted. “They thought you wouldn't walk?” Losing a leg was bad news, but it normally wasn't quite _that_ bad.

“Piece of junk fell on me when the ceiling came down, smashed up my spinal cord reeeal bad.” Junkrat laughed hysterically. “Couldn't feel a thing from the legs down after that one, though, so at least it didn't hurt!”

The story paused for a moment as Junkrat bent down to rummage through the contents of a smashed-open drawer. When he stood back up, he had a ballpoint pen clenched in his flesh hand.

“Doctor started acting all… I don't know, righteous or something, after that,” he continued, “saying he couldn't do shit, I'd messed up too bad.” Junkrat flashed a bright, conspiratorial smile at Roadhog, not seeming to care that he'd get nothing but the mask's blank stare in return. “That lasted right up until I showed him what I had strapped to me—he got all nice and _helpful_ then.”

Roadhog couldn't help but chuckle a bit at that. Junker charisma at its finest; if reason didn't work, force would do just fine.

The smile on Junkrat's face stretched just that little bit wider at the sound of Roadhog's laugh. “It hurt worse than getting blown up—he jammed some nanobots or somethin' right into my spine, still not sure what exactly happened—but my back works now so it's all worth it.” He paused a moment. “Ooh, hey! Maybe we can write that into the contract. I bet I'll get _great_ healthcare if you're there pointing your big nasty fuckoff gun at the docs whenever I need help.”

Well. That explained his posture, at least. Roadhog had just assumed it was all that lugging around an oversized tire that had done it. Still, Junkrat had the right of it. If he could walk and move still, no point worrying about the rest.

“Ah-ha! Found it.” Junkrat waved a square of dirty paper above his head before heading back to the table. He set his finds in front of Roadhog. “There. Now we've got everything we need.”

A nearly dried-up ballpoint pen and grease-stained, decades-old breakfast menu. Roadhog wondered for a moment if it wasn't too late to just shoot the kid and bring the body back. 

Not like it would change anything—word of his betrayal had to have reached the queen by now. Roadhog sighed heavily. In for a haunch, in for the ham. Might as well see this thing through to the end.

Roadhog picked the pen up and gave it a few shakes. The tiny thing barely fit in his hand. “What do you want written?”

“Hrm.” Junkrat blinked, surprised, as if he hadn't even thought about the question. “Can't you come up with something?”

He could feel a headache coming on. “You're the one who wanted this.”

“I—yeah, but… fine.” Junkrat scowled. “First rule, fifty-fifty. That's simple enough.”

They'd both already agreed on that, but it made for a decent starting point. Roadhog wrote down some nonsense about splitting profits equally, using his best penmanship and even adding in some of the legal-speak he half-remembered from old daytime television just for the hell of it. He hardly ever needed to write anything down these days; it was kind of fun, in an odd way, to be able to play around with the words.

Junkrat watched him as he wrote, oddly intent. His eyes darted back and forth from the paper to Roadhog's fingers and back again. When Roadhog finished the curve of a _y_ with an extra little flourish, Junkrat actually leaned forward in his seat to get a closer look.

“You're pretty good at that.”

“Said I'd do it, didn't I?” Roadhog scowled behind his mask.

“Well, yeah, yeah, I knew you'd _do_ it, s'just… didn't think you'd be any good at it, you know? You're a Junker same as anyone else, not some corporate type like you get down by the coast.”

Damn straight he wasn't. Roadhog snarled to himself at the thought—they'd moved in after the Omnium exploded, sucked resources and labor from Australia like maggots burrowing into a dying animal. The whole goddamn country would be better off without them.

“That should be rule two.”

Junkrat looked at him, baffled. “Writing? Junkers? You're gonna hafta help me out here, mate, you're talking a bunch of complete shite right now.”

Roadhog rolled his eyes. (Not that Junkrat would be able to tell, but it made him feel a little better.) “The corporates,” he explained, “we don't work with them.”

“Ooh.” Understanding dawned on Junkrat's face. “That's a good one. But”—he rested his chin on his prosthetic hand, caught deep in thought—“what if one of them's hiring us to attack another? Or wants us to kill some Omnics? Shame to lose out on an opportunity like that just 'cause of who's asking us.”

Roadhog hated the very idea that Junkrat might have a point. But… it would be a problem if they had to hold back from killing something just because some stiff-suited businessperson came around and _asked_ them to do it.

“Fine,” he said, a little angrier than he meant to, “what's your idea, then?”

“We decide together.” Junkrat's skinny little scarred-up chest was puffed out with pride. “On jobs, I mean—so neither of us can just say, 'Hey, we're going here and blowing this up next', and not listen to the other at all.” He scowled. “It's no good, going out on a job only half the crew's in for. Fucks things up real fast.”

Roadhog was beginning to get the feeling Junkrat didn't know what it was that employers actually _did_. He considered telling Junkrat that he had all the right in the world to force Roadhog out on a job he didn't like, thought about whether Junkrat having that knowledge would make his life easier or harder, and shut his mouth.

“Works for me,” he grunted. Rule Two went down right below its sibling, scratched into the paper with a pen that was beginning to write more grey than black. He kept it shorter, this time, fewer little twists on the letters, but he still made sure to fit in a clause about _no fucking suits unless it's each other they want killed_. No point in having ink if he couldn't use it for that.

As he wrote, some of the twitchy nerves seemed to drain from Junkrat. He didn't move around any less, but he stopped flinching every time the curve of a letter brought Roadhog's writing hand closer to his gun. In fact, the more Roadhog wrote the closer Junkrat got—inching over bit by bit until he'd swung around to Roadhog's end of the table and was watching over his shoulder as each letter appeared.

Just as Roadhog was finishing up the last sentence, a tap of metal fingers against his elbow brought him short. Junkrat had been reading the words slowly, muttering each syllable under his breath, but now he had stopped somewhere in the middle of the page and was examining a particular line with sharp-eyed suspicion.

“What's that bit say? The bit about the Junker going somewhere.”

“There isn't a thing about Junkers going anywhere. Didn't ask me to write anything like that.”

“Is too!” Junkrat snapped, suddenly indignant. He leaned over and jabbed his finger at a word in the middle of the page. “ _Junker at_. Junker at what?”

“…Junkrat.”

“What?” 

Roadhog was quiet a long, long moment, pushing down the urge to throttle the kid. “ _Junk-rat_. Not _junker-at_.”

“Oh. Oh!” Junkrat's face split into a jagged smile. “Right! Hah, right, of course. Forgot they had so many letters in common. He gave Roadhog an over-affectionate slap on the back, metal fingers _twanging_ against the barrel of Roadhog's gun. “Congrats, then, mate! You passed my test!”

He grit his teeth.“Right. Sign.” 

“Huh?”

“Anything else you want added?” Roadhog snapped. Much as he didn't mind writing, he certainly didn't care for having an editor standing over his shoulder the whole time. Much less an editor with as much self-confidence and as little common sense as this one.

Junkrat was silent, arms folded over each other, face pursed in deep concentration. “ _Wellll_ ,” he said finally, “I suppose not.”

“Good. Sign, then.” Roadhog shoved the pen and paper over to Junkrat. “We don't have much time.” Or much ink, or much patience left to spare.

Junkrat picked it up gently, looking it over carefully as if he could understand what it said. “Good deal, fifty-fifty. Means we'll be in this together.” He nodded to himself, decisively, then smacked it back onto the table and signed with a wordless looping flourish. Under that, slowly and much more carefully, with frequent not-quite-stealthy-enough glances up to where Roadhog had written the word, he spelled out his name: _J-U-N-K-R-A-T._

Probably he'd had some other name first—one given by a parent or a too-soft caretaker, something proper and civilized-sounding. Most kids managed to pick one up somewhere, even in this age. 

Didn't matter. The names they used now where the only ones that counted.

Underneath Junkrat's enormous letters, Roadhog signed his own name, putting one little embellishment on the final _g_. Who knew when he'd have another chance to write anything.

Once Roadhog was done, Junkrat plucked the repurposed menu off the dirty diner table and folded it in deft, surprisingly even creases. 

He shouldn't even care enough to ask, but—”What are you going to do with that?”

“I,” Junkrat announced, “am going to keep it. It's a promise, really, and you have to keep your promises—I mean, unless you can't fucking be bothered, right, but I'll always be bothered for you. You know?”

Roadhog raised an eyebrow. Shame the effect was lost behind the mask.

“ _Anyway_ , the point is I'm keepin' it. That way we we never forget we're together in this.” With that, Junkrat pulled open a pocket on his vest, one laying right over his heart, and slipped the folded-up piece of paper inside before buttoning it shut once more. “There. Perfect.”

“Perfect,” Roadhog echoed, skeptical, but he couldn't help himself; he reached out, slow enough that Junkrat wouldn't flinch away or go for a knife. His hand was comically huge against the backdrop of Junkrat's skeletal frame. Skin and bones was all Junkrat was, with some scraps of metal and cloth wrapped 'round him for color. Could've strangled him. Didn't really want to. 

Even if it weren't for the treasure, he wouldn't have wanted to. Hellhole like this deserved a little chaos every now and again.

His teeth were like a shark's, serrated and sharp and just about ready to fall out at any moment, and he smiled wide when he caught on. Carefully, he wrapped his hand around Roadhog's fingers and guided him to the spot on his chest where the contract lay. Rough, stained cloth, paper beneath it, another layer of fabric—and then, under that, bare skin and the jackrabbit-quick rhythm of Junkrat's heart.

“Hm.” Roadhog huffed out a breath, then moved his hand so his palm was against the heartbeat and his fingers trailed over Junkrat's ribs and against his sides. He had a strong pulse. “You'd better not die on me too soon,” he said.

Junkrat cackled. His body shook with the motion. “Nothing's managed to kill me yet! And anyway, that's what you're here for, right? Didn't bring you in on this for nothing.”

He still hadn't moved away. Still hadn't readied a weapon. It was like the contract actually _meant_ something in his hands, like he trusted Roadhog now that they had one.

“Yeah,” Roadhog said, “that's right.” 

Probably he'd back to wanting to murder the idiot by tomorrow. (Maybe sooner, if it turned out he snored in his sleep.) Probably this wouldn't work, probably it would explode—literally—in their faces, probably he'd be alone again in a month or else dead and rotting in a pile of corpses. Probably this was the second-stupidest thing he'd ever done.

Roadhog knew all that. And yet, for a moment, he didn't believe any of it. He looked at his rail-thin employer and his shiv-sharp grin and the twitchy convulsive movements he couldn't seem to stop and though, _Yes_. He was bloodthirsty, ready to kill, alive in a way he hadn't been for decades.

Probably this would end up a disaster. But he'd see it through nonetheless.


End file.
